The present invention relates to a needle detacher for syringe improved to be easily manipulated without causing any infections accident.
Recently the disposable syringe has come into wide use for injection or blood-collecting.
Such syringe is usually made of plastic from a hygienic viewpoint, i.e., so that it may be disposable after use to avoid not only any possible infectious accident but also to eliminate conventional requirement for rather troublesome procedure of sterilization.
Once a syringe has been used for injection or blood-collecting, the needle is detached from the cylinder of this syringe and subjected to disposal at an appointed place.
More specifically, the needle put on the syringe cylinder is loaded into a needle cover, then the needle is detached together with the needle cover from the syringe cylinder and thrown away at the appointed place.
According to such method, it is rather difficult to load the needle into the needle cover since the latter has a relatively small mouth and sometimes the needle point pierces the fingers holding the needle cover. This may cause an infectious accident, should the needle be a contaminated needle which has been used for a patient having pathogenic bacteria or viruses.
To overcome such problem, the inventors have previously proposed the needle detacher to be used without a danger of infectious accident in Japanese Utility Model Application No. 1987-11852.
FIG. 21 of the accompanying drawing illustrates the invention disclosed in said Japanese Utility Model Application. Referring to this figure, reference numeral 41 designates a main body of a needle receiving container having its upper side fully opened. An outer lid 42 is secured to the container main body 41 and an inner lid 43 is slidably incorporated in the outer lid 42.
The outer lid 42 has a needle trap opening 45 comprising a rectangular opening 45a adapted to be engaged with a needle neck 47 and a fan-shaped opening 45b which is continuous with said rectangular opening 45a and functions as a needle chute opening.
Reference numeral 46 designates a syringe cylinder on which the needle neck 47 is fit. The needle neck 47, as being put on the syringe cylinder 46, is inserted into the fan-shaped opening 45b, then moved into engagement with the rectangular opening 45a and held therein. From such condition, the syringe cylinder 46 or the container main body 41 is rotated until the needle 48 is detached from the syringe cylinder 46 and then the needle 48 falls through the needle chute openings 45b into the container main body 41.
Before the container is thrown away together with the needles contained therein, the needle trap opening 45 of the outer lid 42 must be covered with the inner lid 43.
With the needle detacher as has been mentioned above, however, detachment of the needle neck 47 from the syringe cylinder 46 can not be smoothly achieved, since the needle neck 47 is held only by the rectangular opening 45a of the needle trap opening 45 with an unadequate holding effect. Furthermore, the inner lid 43 may be unintentionally rotated during transport of the container so as to expose the fan-shaped opening 45b of the needle trap opening 45 and, as a result, one or more needles may be exposed to the exterior, since the inner lid 43 is rotatably mounted. The needle thus exposed to the exterior may cause an injury. In addition, the inner lid 43 requires manual operation which is troublesome for the user.
Finally, a dimension of the fan-shaped opening 45b is relatively small, so it is impossible to protect the user perfectly against a danger that the needle point might pierce the fingers holding the container main body 41 during insertion of the needle neck 47 put on the syringe cylinder 46 into the needle trap opening 45. Consequently, there still remains a danger that the needle might cause an infectious accident if the needle has been contaminated with pathogenic bacteria or viruses.